


PPDC Online

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PPDC Online has had a great run and in the days leading up to its endgame, Stacker Pentecost brings an old player onto the development team. Even though Raleigh hasn't played since he and his brother wiped out against Knifehead two years ago, he's not about to pass up a job on the game's small but dedicated and tight-knit staff, especially if it means he gets to move to NYC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Mother _fucker_ ," is the first thing Jin snarls when he wakes up five minutes before his alarm goes off and he checks their Dome status after extracting his phone from under his ass. Hu whimpers into his pillow from the bunk above, pulls his blanket over his head, trying to shut out the cold air of their room, and tries to catch a few more minutes before he's forcefully dragged out of bed and deposited in the shower, as he is most mornings.

"Oh," Cheung says from across the room, roused from sleep by Jin's outburst, but he sighs and stands up, ducks into the bathroom instead. "Fucking-- Mako."

"Hu, wake up." Jin kicks the bottom of Hu's bed, heel smacking against the metal struts, "Mako just raided us for one of our spare nuclear cores."

"D'she geddit?"

"Yeah, she got it."

"Mm'fuck." Hu's slurry sleep-voice clears up in the course of one sentence as the magnitude of what Mako's done finally registers to him: "G'nna graffiti her goddamn _desk_ , it takes a week to build a core and the next event starts Friday--"

Jin snorts, swings his legs over the edge of his bed and pulls his feet under his knees, tugging his blanket to wrap it around his shoulders while he tabs through the app. "She's so territorial. Taking our core just because we were in her stomping ground..."

"Yeah, but she's been cultivating those mites for a long time, that's why the drops were so good." Hu's head appears over the edge of his bed, the rest of him half-hanging over the flimsy rail, extending his iPhone with PPDC already opened. "Drift, c'mon."

Jin sighs as he whips out his 'droid, holds it close enough for the NFC to register and they collect the daily bonus for Crimson Typhoon. "Our _cores_ , man."

"We'll get her back after the Event," Cheung cuts in placatingly, sticking his head around the still-open bathroom door, pants around his ankles and phone in his hand-- either checking his mail or playing one of the PPDC mini-games. Probably both; Mako e-mails her team the itinerary every morning. "We have to leave in twenty minutes, c'mon."

"Bro," Hu retorts, "I'm not brushing my teeth while you take a shit."

"I'm actually done, but this level is taking a while." 

Jin stands up this time, shuffles to the bathroom and shuts himself into the shower stall, tossing his boxers over the partition on top to land on Cheung's head as he turns on the water, standing just out of the spray as it warms up. 

* * *

"Next stop, Wei boys," Tendo says, grinning, when Cheung finally blinks awake, both brothers still slumped against him. "Sleep alright?" He looks as chipper as he always does (which is to say not at all, but in good cheer despite a severe lack of sleep), a steaming paper cup clutched in one gloved hand and the other clinging to the rail above his head. 

"How long were you standing there?" Cheung asks blearily, glancing behind him to check the placard in the station and stifling a yawn into the sleeve of his coat. "Since your stop? You should've woken me up."

"No way, brother. Last time I tried, you almost made me spill my coffee."

Cheung roots around in his jacket for his phone while Tendo does the same, extracting the device just as the train doors close and they lurch out of the penultimate station. He laughs as they collect their daily bonuses-- not as lucrative as drifting with a teammate, but not a bad haul all the same. "Well," the eldest Wei drawls, "I didn't say 'touch me'."

"Too slow this morning, huh?"

"I let 'em have it."

"Liar," Jin mumbles against his shoulder, "you were just stuck on the toilet."

Hu kicks Tendo lightly on the ankle, eyes cracking open just enough to show he's awake. "Choi. How's it going?"

"Can't complain," he answers with a knowing smile, tugging his scarf over his nose in preparation for their transfer. "You guys check your status this morning?"

Hu aggressively plucks Tendo's coffee out of his hand as he stands up and slings his backpack over one shoulder, drains half of it and gives it back. "You put her up to it."

"Sure did. We spent five days raising the mites in Kwun Tong to class IV before you three Red Wedding'd them." Tendo adds matter-of-factly, pulling out his phone and brandishing his dwindling supply of parts at Hu, "And that was a mark IV core which, let me remind you, you wouldn't have been able to craft without me. We're even, brother."

"From one engineer to another," Cheung laughs, idly pulling on the end of Tendo's scarf until it starts to constrict around his neck, Jin having moved behind the shorter man and started to breathe into his ear, "we're nowhere near even, _brother_. You wouldn't have been able to collect on those mites anyway, we just took care of them before you and Mako got in over your heads."

"Besides," Jin chirps, breath washing over the side of Tendo's head as his fingers start to close over his shoulders, "if you guys really didn't want us wandering in, you would've been cultivating them in a guarded instance instead of the one we cleared last week."

The train squeals into the last station just before the Weis can really gang up on him and Tendo ducks out the door as it whooshes open, triplets on his heels and jostling against his shoulders, pushing him steadily closer to the edge of the platform until he promises to do their next upgrade for free.

* * *

"We have class five mites," Aleksis informs Jin as the triplets barge into the local deli, Cheung making a beeline for the counter and their (already prepared) usual order with a handful of bills while Hu swings by the refrigerator for their drinks, "you will help us kill them today, yes?" He has a plastic bag slung over his arm, a few crumbs in his beard, his light jacket unzipped. Sasha thumbs at a lipstick print on her cup, raises one hand in greeting.

"Yeah," Jin answers cheerfully, leaning on their table while Sasha pulls on her windbreaker, "our babies in Kwai Tsing should be at C5 in a couple days too. Ripe for slaughter."

"Which parts?"

"Mostly fuel, since we're running low." He waves a hand through the air, fingers drawing a pattern to indicate the puzzle game that makes diesel-related loot from monster drops higher quality, and more common. "We go pretty fast with three of us, but no one's had a lot of time to play lately. Still working out the bugs from our last patch."

Sasha snorts, picks up her bag and leads the way out of the door, husband and triplets flanking her. "That is reason Aleksis and I have not explored Kowloon yet. How many players have become stuck in walls already?"

"To be fair, they were trying _really hard_ to get themselves stuck there," Hu chimes in as he digs into their bag of food, letting the door shut behind him. He passes one sandwich (bacon egg and cheese on a roll) to Cheung, another to Jin and then tears into the last one himself, breath misting as he takes a huge bite around the foil.

More affectionate than irritated, mostly because Jin doesn't have much to do with the administrative end, "You know how the players get when we rush a map to stay on schedule."

"Yeah," Cheung grumbles, shoving his breakfast into his inner coat pocket, then zipping the jacket up to his neck. "I left a couple tickets overnight because we made server-wide announcements every five minutes. If they went and got themselves stuck for shits and giggles, fuck 'em."

"Make sure you are free during lunch break," Aleksis says as the triplets fall in line behind him to avoid a blast of wind rushing down the street. His jacket flutters back, smacks Hu in the face before he grabs onto the hem and holds it down.

Jin breathes into his hands, rubs them together and then reaches into Cheung's pockets for the two hand warmers he'd left unused on their last snowboarding trip. "Aren't you two cold?"

Hu plucks them out of his hands and tosses them back to Cheung. "Don't waste those. We'll be at the office in two minutes."

Sasha only says, "New Yorkers are so delicate," while her husband laughs, looks over his shoulder and grins.

"Pray you do not someday experience Russian winter," Aleksis tells them, "you three would freeze to death."

"Sure we look pathetic," Jin retorts, "but have you _met_ Californians?"

* * *

"Mako," Cheung says as the triplets stalk into her office, all three of them walking in step, identical expressions on their faces. "Mako Mako Mako..."

"Having a good morning?" she asks, back still turned to the door but laughter in her voice.

Jin's hands sneak around the back of her chair, fingers closing lightly around her throat and he runs the nail of his thumb up the back of her neck. He mock-throttles her while Cheung and Hu crowd around the table, claiming her mouse and a few of the papers off her desk and says indignantly, "Just the opposite, actually." 

"We were really surprised when we woke up this morning," Hu drawls, idly googling 'betrayal' and changing her desktop background to the iconic Puss in Boots picture from Shrek 2 of the cat giving someone his enormous puppy-dog eyes.

"Is this supposed to be revenge?" Mako gasps, nails digging into Jin's wrists, "He's so cute!"

"You'll see our revenge when you log in," Cheung informs her cheerfully, taking over the computer from Hu and signing her into the PPDC game. 

As soon as she sees her new Shatterdome rank, Mako snorts, "'Filthy traitor'? How sweet."

"Wait for it..."

Jin lets go of Mako's neck when she finally gets a look at her character, usually not too different in appearance from herself, but now with electric blue liberty spikes and a clown suit. "Beautiful," Jin sighs, pretending to wipe away a tear. "You can't change it for a week or we really won't forgive you, Mako."

Mako covers her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. "When did you have time to do this?"

"Jin did it on the bus this morning, then slept through the entire train ride."

"Ah, I'm sorry you had to go through all this trouble, but I need my armor to prepare for the next event."

"That's the beauty of it," Cheung says cheerfully, "You've got a status effect that changes the appearance of all your armor to a clownsuit for a week. We've been doing this in our spare time."

"So productive."

Hu adds, "I'm gonna inflict this on everyone who exploits bugs just to make us go out of our way to get them unstuck."

"Aw, bro, they're just trying to talk you up. It's your fault for posting so many selfies."

"I do have to speak with you three," Mako interrupts, sensing that the Weis have exacted their revenge and are ready to let the conversation move on. "We're bringing someone new in and he needs a place to stay for a week. If you could--"

Cheung answers, "Yeah, sure, as long as he's not a slob."

With big brother's confirmation, Jin quips, "Fresh meat? Who is it?"

"His name is Raleigh Becket."

"He was running Alaska with his brother a few years back, wasn't he?"

"Aah, not so fresh meat."

"We're bringing him back on board to help with the double event. He's joining my dome as co-pilot."

"Boss is letting you?"

"I haven't abused my privileges building up my dome or my Jaeger," Mako explains happily. "It's about time."

"Congrats." Hu ruffles her hair, pulls Mako's chair away from her desk and spins it twice before shoving it back in place. "You'll watch our backs for the endgame, then?"

Here, Mako crosses her arms over her chest, props one ankle up on the opposite knee and bares her teeth. "You'll watch mine!" 

"Ooooh, big talk."

"We're shaking in our sneakers."

"Back to work," Cheung laughs, dragging his brothers by the collar out of her office.

* * *

Raleigh's buzzed into the office ten minutes after lunch break begins. One of the triplets just barely misses bowling him over as he rushes for his workstation, a bagel clenched in his teeth and four others in a stack on his paper plate. He waits for both brothers to take one before ferrying the plate over to the Kaidanovskys, then dashing back to his desk. Chuck shoves the last corner of a sandwich into his mouth and shouts a muffled demand for healing across the room.

"Couldn't all stay in one place," Cheung snarls, ineffectually jabbing at his keyboard as if doing so will make him run any faster. "Everyone come back to the courtyard when you're done."

"Yeah, yeah. Almost there."

"We are also nearly done."

"Am I interrupting something?" Raleigh asks Stacker as the older man intercepts him at the door. "I don't remember dungeon raids."

"If you spend some time on the mobile app," Pentecost explains quickly as he walks Raleigh to the lounge area where a few cartons of cream cheese (plain, chive, tomato and cinnamon) are laid out next to a massive pile of bagels, "you can raise the mites in an area for the kinds of drops you need in certain instances. Implemented it last year, been pretty popular. Kaidanovksys maxed out their district this morning so they're getting the Weis to help clear it out."

"Huh. Whose idea was that?"

Impatiently, Stacker crosses his arms over his chest and says, "Geiszler and Gottlieb came up with the idea and back end code, Miss Mori, Mr. Choi and Jin did most of the interface. You can keep track of your equipment and inventory with your phone, too."

"Make an addictive game even harder to put down," Raleigh translates immediately.

"In the meantime, have some lunch." Stacker nods, already looking harried, file stuffed to nearly overflowing in his hand, and leaves him with a pointed, "They'll be done soon enough."

Raleigh wanders back to the main office with a bagel in hand, glances around the congregation and plants himself behind Cheung's chair. His medic, decked out in body armor and a white medical bag slung over his shoulder, hangs back, has to keep a wider field of view. The teams are scattered into three groups-- Aleksis and Sasha, both younger Weis, and Chuck holding ground with Mako. Cheung fires the occasional shot at whichever mite his brothers are working on, but spends most of his time frantically healing whoever's closest to death.

When the five players in the main area slump back into their seats and Mako comes out of her office to high-five and congratulate everyone on a wildly successful run, Raleigh switches his bagel to his left hand and waves awkwardly. "Hey."

"Mr. Becket. I will give you a tour of the office," Mako addresses him politely while the triplets and Russians divvy up the loot, "and then we'll speak more about what is expected of you over dinner."

"We're going to the gym after work," Hu says, tapping his foot against Mako's heel, "but you two should come out and get drinks with us after. Welcome the newbie, yeah? He's coming home with us anyway."

"Thanks for having me," Raleigh adds during a brief lull, fist-bumping the triplets in turn as they gather around him.

"We were thinking karaoke or pool," Jin drawls, "but Cheung won't sing and he'll be bored, so we decided on pool. You play?"

Raleigh shrugs, but grins back. "I can."

* * *

"Suck it," Jin laughs, shoving the end of his pool cue into Cheung's face while he lines up for a shot, "put my stick in your mouth and-- _agh_!"

Hu drags him away from the table, shoves his face down on the empty table next to them and hits the button near their bench to call over the server. He orders a round of drinks for everyone, but when she comes back with an entire bottle of tequila and all its requisite trappings, she says it's on the house-- courtesy of the owners. 

("We took over the dome from Hin Shen and Xichi," Cheung explains to Raleigh as he pours seven shots and the game drags on, "they wiped out last year and stopped playing, but we still come out to K-town sometimes, so.")

Jin and Mako have teamed up for the match against the other two Weis, Raleigh having been dragged into a three-person game with the Russians but he wanders over to observe Mako's turns anyway. She easily sinks the eight ball after Hu accidentally sets up a perfect shot for her final round, then pumps her fist in the air.

"Punishment game!" Jin crows, high-fiving Mako. "Maybe we're just better at handling balls, huh."

"You should be," Hu shoots back venomously, "with all the practice you get."

"Hu has to do a shot off Cheung," Mako says flatly, but her face cracks when her teammate promptly wrestles his eldest brother onto the table, pulls his shirt up and pours a small mound of salt just below his navel. Hu raises an eyebrow while he slices a wedge of lime, as if asking her if she _actually_ thinks this could be new to any of them. He laughs as he fits the fruit between Cheung's teeth. "I'll do it if you do it, Mako." 

"Put the salt on his nipples for her." After a beat, Jin adds, "Hey, both of you go at the same time, I can get another shot."

"You two," Cheung growls around the lime, "are sick."

"Hey, Mako suggested it. I think she just wants to see Hu run his tongue all over our big brother--"

Mako shakes her head, presses her lips into a thin line and says instead, "You can think what you want to, but I am not the one who lost a match."

The Kaidanovskys have gravitated to their table by the end of the game and Aleksis is laughing by the time Jin tips the shot of tequila over at the base of Cheung's neck and Hu laps the salt off his stomach, then immediately moves up a few inches to sip the alcohol pooling in his belly button. He catches the rivulets between Cheung's abs when he's finished and licks a long stripe up his chest just for the benefit of some of the onlookers at other tables before claiming the lime from his mouth. 

"I can't believe you three are related," someone says from behind Jin.

A camera shutter clicks and Jin doubles over, stifling a laugh into his fist when he sees So-yi with her phone out, her and Yuna both sitting on the rails cordoning the area. "You just drank back all those calories you three worked so hard to lose today," she tells them matter-of-factly. "Video evidence right here."

Yuna rolls her eyes, but pushes her foot against Hu's hip, both of them easily familiar with the Weis after months of membership at the same gym. "Besides, aren't you guys a little too comfortable doing body shots off each other?"

Raleigh gives Mako a look that's half horrified, half amused, then turns back just in time to see Hu toss Cheung a clean rag and pour him another shot of tequila. He says wryly in their defense, and as a child of the same generation, "College was pretty wild for you guys, huh?"

"Man." Cheung grimaces as he downs his own shot, wipes himself clean. He flexes his hands a few times to show off the scars on his knuckles in the dim lighting. "We were in a frat. You people have _no_ idea."

* * *

Cheung wakes up the morning after to the sound and smell of sizzling bacon and eggs. Jin rolls over, elbow smacking him in the nose as he tosses his arm out to the side, and rolls himself into the blanket, leaving Cheung out in the cold. He sits up, glances at the already-made bed across the room where Raleigh had crashed the night before, and shuffles to the kitchen.

"I made breakfast," Raleigh says sheepishly, gesturing at food on the table-- some toast, some bacon, eggs done sunny-side up. "And went grocery shopping."

"Holy shit," Jin mumbles when he trudges in after his brother, blinking at the spread and then at their guest. "He's a morning person."

Cheung muffles a yawn against the back of his hand and wanders to the cupboard, pulling out four mismatched plates and grabbing a few sets of chopsticks out of a drawer. "Least someone in this house is. Hey Raleigh, we don't have any... clean... forks, but you look like you're fine with chopsticks, so."

"Oh, yeah. Don't worry about me."

Hu's last into the kitchen, scrubbing at his eyes and cocking an eyebrow when he smells the bacon. He takes his place at the table without a word, starts digging in and only nods in greeting at Raleigh, who nods back and slides another two eggs onto his plate. 

"He'll wake up soon," Jin reassures their guest, poking Hu in the ribs as his brother mechanically shovels food into his mouth, then ducking away from a vicious elbow jabbed in his direction. 

Raleigh just smiles sunnily, corners of his eyes crinkling up. "My brother's like that too."

Cheung grins around a mouthful of toast. "There's always one."

By the time every plate has been cleared and Raleigh's standing up to grab the dishes, Jin seizes him by the shoulders and shoves him back down into his seat while Cheung collects the cutlery and passes them off to Hu, who's already picked up a sponge and turned on the water. "You stand up," Jin warns cheerfully, "and we break your legs. Be a good guest."

"If you want to stay longer than... whenever," Cheung offers, paying careful attention to the glee in his brothers' faces, "feel free. Leave groceries to us, though."

"If you wanna keep making breakfast," Hu quips from the sink, "you can stay forever."

("I thought it might be... isolating for you to move to a new city without your brother," Mako'd said over a steaming bowl of ramen the night before, "so I arranged for you to stay with the triplets until you're settled in."

"Me and Yancy used to PK them," Raleigh answers nervously, dumping entirely too much pepper into his bowl, "like, we screwed with them a lot before we stopped playing."

"I'm sure they're over it," she tells him after taking a long sip of water, hiding a smile behind the rim of her glass. "If you're still worried, bribe them with food.")

"Did I just get proposed to?"

Jin laughs, swipes a dishrag over the table and ducks back into their room to change and shower. Cheung leans against the edge of the table, crosses his arms over his chest and smirks at Hu's back. "Adopted, more like." He taps Raleigh on the shoulder and continues, "Towels in the closet down that hall, 'nother bathroom at the end. We have a foldout couch in the computer room, but we're in there pretty late most nights, so you might as well crash in our room until we set something up for you." 

"Oh, are we briefing him?" Hu wipes his hands on his sweatpants, and cracks his neck a few times before chiming in again. "Our mom likes to come by every Saturday to make dinner and harass us for grandkids for a couple hours, so if you see a total stranger wandering around, be nice. Our dad'll probably park himself in the computer room and watch TV or something."

"Grandkids?" Raleigh leans forward to get a closer look at Cheung's face, then directs the question at Hu's back. "Aren't you guys twenty two or something? Grandkids?"

"... six," Cheung corrects with a pained expression. "We're twenty-six."

Raleigh nods awkwardly, then grins, already comfortable with the easy familiarity they've decided to treat him with. "A computer room though? Mind if I set up in there too?"

"We couldn't decide who gets their own room, so we turned it into the computer room." Cheung grimaces while he considers the state of their control center-- folders and parts stacked on the desks, any space not taken up by keyboards and computer mice and secondary monitors covered in other gadgets and accessories. But there is a spare chair (currently creaking under the weight of several binders) and enough space on a desk to accommodate a laptop. He says weakly, "We'll clean it up a bit for you tonight, it's a mess right now."

* * *

"You're all set up," is what Tendo greets Raleigh with when the triplets swipe him into the office. He hands over an ID card, and an index card covered in passwords and notes and a small list of unspoken, established rules (1. always take your own used carton out of the Keurig coffee maker; 2. ALWAYS TAKE YOUR OWN USED CARTON OUT OF THE KEURIG COFFEE MAKER). "You get that station over there, and you can change the passwords through the settings-- well, you know how to use a PC. Welcome back, Becket boy."

"Good to see you again," replies Raleigh, grinning wide. "I got it."

"Mako wants you in the staff room," Tendo continues briskly, "meeting with Geiszler and Gottlieb, plus Mr. Pentecost and Herc. Once you have access to your company e-mail, Mako sends out the schedule every morning so you can check that instead."

"Not the uh-- the triplets or Kaidanovskys?"

"Jin helps once we've hashed everything out, but you know how players get when you spoil the next event for them."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I'm really not a player anymore."

"Two kaijus," Newt says firmly as Raleigh joins the congregation, tapping a pen against the table in an erratic, hyped-up beat until Hermann snatches it out of his hand and consigns it to one of his coat pockets. "It's the perfect time, the penultimate event. We've got all five of the final bosses ready to go. Double event, then triple."

"Much as I hate to agree with him," Hermann grudgingly concurs, "I also believe it's an appropriate time to unleash two of these monstrosities onto the playerbase at once. They've been predicting it for a while now."

Pentecost cants his head at Hermann and Newt. "I'll leave that to you, then," he says, and then addresses Raleigh directly. "We've brought Mr Becket on not only to help run the endgame, but also to assist in the transition to the next stage of PPDC online. Miss Mori, I trust you'll give him the rundown once we've finished here."

"Yes."

"And," Stacker warns, "that you will take his suggestions and experiences seriously."

Mako's expression sours, but she nods. She'd told Raleigh to his face already that their next expansion would be an effort to pull back players who had wiped out and quit instead of starting over (read: most of them), and as a former player who fit all the criteria of someone likely to pick the game up again, he would have a significant amount of clout should he partake in the decision-making process. She'd also told him (and, no doubt, Stacker himself) in no uncertain terms that given the choice, she would have asked Nova Hyperion's old crew to consult instead.

"You will have the next week to relearn the game," Mako says as she sees Raleigh to his desk after the meeting, "and everything you need will be provided by my dome. Your character's data is the same as it was from three years ago, and you will not be receiving any special treatment because of your relationship with the office."

"That's good to hear, considering my guy's pretty much maxed out."

The look Mako tosses over her shoulder could probably freeze lava, if lava were a guy in an oversized sweater. She wraps up her explanation with, "We've done server-wide resets twice since you stopped playing, so you will have a chance to redistribute your skill points however you like. Do you have any questions?" 

"No."

"If you have problems, you can come to me or ask any of the triplets. They can help you, but you would have to buy them lunch."

"Come to you," Raleigh promptly echoes, mouth curving into a slow grin. "Got it."

Against the odds, Mako smiles back before she turns on her heels and marches back to her office.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued this on a prompt , ah. Also falling in line with canon (and contradicting previous headcanon, sigh) that the age order of triplets is Cheung, Jin then Hu.

Raleigh was supposed to move out a month and three weeks ago, but the triplets’ apartment has been comfortable enough and the three of them have insisted that he can stay as long as he likes enough that he imagines he might just end up rooming with them semi-permanently. He’d offered to pay rent, but they managed to talk him down to his share of utilities and breakfast duty.

He’s still sleeping in Cheung’s bed, which wouldn’t be too weird, except Hu sometimes tumbles right into it after he makes a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night in lieu of climbing back up to his bunk. He always seems somewhat sheepish about it in the morning— not that Raleigh’s bothered by it.

Their parents have already inquired as to whether or not any of them are dating the new guy; and have also expressed their support, so long as it’s only _one_ of them and the other two still have plans to give them grandchildren. Raleigh almost breaks a rib laughing once Hu translates the conversation after they’ve left— the brothers’ answers being a collective ‘no’, and several hundred more ‘no, what?!’s just for good measure.

Cheung had suggested after the first time that Raleigh and Hu just switch beds entirely, because Hu has been crawling into his big brothers' since before any of them can remember and he’s probably not going to stop until he’s dead. But the youngest Wei likes his top bunk and if Raleigh were being honest, he kind of likes having a brother(s) again.

They have a trip to IKEA planned for sometime over the weekend, but that’s a few days off.

All four of them are lounging in the computer room after work and a trip to the gym, then dinner. Hu’s sprawled across the couch, a lapdesk on his chest while he contorts himself to type. Cheung, Jin and Raleigh are each at a desk, compiling, arguing with their Dome on the PPDC forum and browsing the news, respectively.

Raleigh's notebook’s been in bad shape for a while already— the thing’s about four years old, and it clicks when it’s on, but it runs fine most of the time. Once in a while, though, it’ll give off a grinding shriek (probably some discs out of alignment) and bluescreen before shutting off immediately. A system restore usually lets it run a little longer, though the time between crashes has been decreasing.

When it happens this time, Jin nearly falls out of his chair from the noise; Cheung has his headphones in, but he looks over his shoulder when he sees Hu jerk up into a sitting position out of the corner of his eye.

"You need a new computer," Jin says flatly as he stands up and wanders over to take a closer look at the laptop, reaching over Raleigh’s shoulder to boot it in safe mode and nudging him aside. "It hurts me just to see this old thing limping along for you. Put it out of its misery already."

"It’s been loyal for this long," Raleigh answers defensively, "my brother used this one when he was in the military, okay? It means a lot to me."

"We didn’t say you have to throw it out," Cheung says, sounding amused. "Just… get a system that works. It’ll cost less to replace than to fix at this point."

"Well actually," Hu says, "we might be able to get it fixed cheap, if Hannibal has the parts lying around. We’d have to go to Chinatown though."

Raleigh turns his now-infamous puppy-dog eyes on Cheung. He’s about two weeks older than the three of them, but he knows how to play big brothers like a fiddle.

They make the trip to Chinatown, Raleigh hauling his notebook with him to work that day.

The man sitting behind the counter of the cluttered shop they step into waves them into the back room without even bothering to look up. The massive white guy sitting at the desk in the back office grimaces when he sees them. “Look, boys,” he says, “if this is about the loot from your last drop, let’s stop pretending your crew would’ve been able to pick it all up anyway.”

"Send our dome a hundred K for the parts you took and we’ll let it go, Chau." Cheung gives him a long look, gauging how much they might actually let illegal out-of-game money exchanges slide. "You can even keep the realworld cash you made on it, as long as we get the parts to fix the newbie’s computer for a, uh. Discount."

"Fine." Hannibal eyes the parts that Hu’s pulling down from the shelves— a laptop fan, a new hard drive, motherboard, and a few sticks of RAM. "Ten percent."

"Sixty," says Cheung.

"Twenty-five."

"Sixty."

"Thirty?"

"Hmm."

"Thirty-five."

"Nah. Sixty."

"Forty."

"Deal."

Hu ducks around Hannibal’s desk and peers through the dusty windown on the door behind his chair. “Where’s Fang?”

"Workshop."

Raleigh trails behind the triplets as they troop into the dimly-lit back room, where the hum of running workstations and the whirr of a power screwdriver drown out all the city sounds from outside. Hu joins the woman standing behind the counter. She gives him a cool smile, then looks at the boxes in Jin’s hands before wordlessly extending her hands for them.

"These parts suck," she says after glancing at the part numbers.

"They’re for Raleigh. New meat. Anything we give him is gonna better than what he has."

"What’s he gonna do on it?"

The Weis turn expectant looks on Raleigh.

"Uh— PPDC, e-mail and internet, mostly. Maybe videochats?"

Fang glances at the part names again, then runs a hand over the back of her shaved head. “Good enough. They still suck, though. Give me his machine.”

Cheung is in Raleigh’s backpack before he has a chance to reach into it himself, the other man passing over his beloved laptop without even giving him a chance to say goodbye. Fang whistles under her breath, places it bottom-up in a free space on her table and promptly begins to dismantle it.

“ _Dòjeh_ , Fang.”

"You really managed to pick the one motherboard that’ll fit this clunker."

"And you say I forget where I come from."

Fang passes Hu the old HD while Jin unwraps the new one and jiggles the mouse on a tricked-out Alien PC sitting on a nearby desk. He reaches for the enclosure Fang keeps around just for backing up hard drives onto new ones, and starts the process with no delay.

"This is so cool," Raleigh says, circling the perimeter of the work area until Cheung herds him back to a clear area where there’s nothing of particular interest for him to touch (and potentially break). There’s so little on Raleigh’s old drive that Jin finishes backing it up just as Fang and Hu finish with the motherboard and RAM. She slots the HD into place, screws it and the laptop’s back cover into place and hands the notebook back to Cheung.

"How much?"

"Forty."

"Then your total is two hundred."

Cheung frowns, but he whips out his phone, tabs to an app and quickly sends her the amount. “Done. Are you sure that’s right?”

"Are you questioning my math?"

Raleigh looks between them, wallet halfway out of his pocket before the exchange registers and he looks frantically at Cheung. “Hey, don’t— I can—”

"You can buy us lunch for the next week," Jin interrupts.

Hu pumps his fist, then drags Fang into a warm hug and plants a kiss on her temple, mostly for steeply undercharging them on what would essentially qualify as a new laptop. “Yeah! Cheat week! Fang, you’re a hero.”

"You won’t get such a good deal next time," she answers, resigned to being trapped under Hu’s arm for as long as he wants to keep her there. "Unless you text me again for your next drop, anyway."

"How much did you make on the last one, anyway?"

"Two thousand in cash for the set of weapons and five hundred on a set of armor," Fang answers smugly.

"Ah… no wonder you undercharged us so much."

Raleigh keeps his mouth politely zipped about the illegality of the triplets’ aiding and abetting what has clearly turned out to be an MMO farming operation, but he saves the questions for when they leave.

(‘You guys know that’s against the rules, right?’ he says, and Jin laughs, nudging Hu on the arm.

'Told you he'd catch on.'

'The boss knows about it anyway,' Cheung answers, 'Fang builds LOCCENT's computers and servers for a big discount and we let her run her business on the side. The players are only cheating themselves anyway.'

'Hashtag startups,' Hu quips.)


End file.
